Night time routine

How is everyone getting there babies to sleep at night?
My lo is 9 weeks and ebf it takes 3-4 hours to get her in to her crib sleeping and it is doing my head in!! I normally get her ready for bed between half six and half seven when she starts to get fussy she then feeds for about an hour and a half and sometimes falls asleep on the boob I then spend the next few hours trying to get her in to the crib and sleepinv!

I’ve tried white noise making sure she is in a deep sleep she is in a sleepy head and grobag. I’ve tried keeping her up later but she just ends up angry. She will be passed out in a deep sleep for 5-15 minutes before she wakes and I have to start over most nights she will go down for about ten which is ok when she sleeps but last few nights she has been up every 40mins/hour and feeding like a newborn.

Comments (20)

My 8wo fell into her own wee routine from quite early on thankfully. I put eldest to bed at 7 then take baby into our room and lie in bed with her feeding (also ebf) for around 60-90mins then she just passes out. I then transfer her to crib. If she wakes up I put on the heartbeat sound on her Ewan dream sheep and rock the crib for a little while. 9 times out 10 she's sleeping for 8.30pm. She's quite laid back and easy going personality so she doesn't tend to get herself worked up too much very often. I sympathise with you because what you're describing was my eldest. She never slept day or night and would scream the place down every time I put her down. They say it takes around 30 mins for them to fall into a deep sleep so try waiting to transfer her into crib after half an hour. I also found an earlier bedtime worked. Try doing your routine an hour earlier before she starts to get fussy because it's harder to get an overtired baby to sleep. Good luck.

So I start my “routine” at around 7. I’ll turn on the living room lamp and draw the blinds so it’s not as bright. I’ll then give him a feed and read him a little story. Between 7.30 & 8 I’ll take him up for a nice relaxing bubbly bath (sometimes on his own, sometimes with me for a bit of skin to skin) after that we’ll have a baby massage with our lotion in the bedroom with the lights dim and get him into his sleep clothes. This will take us to about 8.30/8.45. We’ll then turn on the lamp in the hallway and turn the bedroom lamp off so it’s only a tiny bit of light and he’ll cluster feed for about an hour or so and eventually drop off so I can pop him in his Moses. He still wakes every 1and a half hours/2 hours for a feed during the night but always goes back in his Moses unless it’s around 6am when it’s light out, then he comes back to bed with me for a couple hours.

I just make sure that nothing is exciting and everything is dark to help establish his circadian rhythm. I also allow the cluster feeding at night as he’s just placing his milk order for the next day. I just wait for him to drop off the breast on his own. My routine is quite time consuming also but it doesn’t particularly “do my head in”. I enjoy my child and I enjoy doing this with him. When daddies not at work we bath him together, baby massage him together and read to him together. Don’t get me wrong there’s stuff that I need to get done around the house and I want to spend time with my partner but I don’t think you can rush them to sleep. I’m sure over time it’ll become less time as their feeds become shorter when they become better at getting the milk out but for now (at least in my case) it is what it is 🤷‍♀️ Go with the flow and don’t get stressed about it.

She falls asleep east enough it just getting her to the point where she will go in to the crib and stay asleep as she generally falls back asleep on the boob within five minutes.
I have tried waiting for up to an hour and it doesn’t seem to make a difference. She has just gone 30mins in her crib before waking again. So I’m back feeding her to sleep for the fourth time this evening. I’m just exhausted and it would be really nice to actually be able to get to sleep when I know she is sleeping. I feel totally trapped in the bedroom from 7 on wards every night.

I really need some quality sleep and there is only so much that oh can do as he works full time and can’t help get her back to sleep.

Our LO (little one) has her grizzly few hours from 7-9pm then she is changed, zipped into her ergococoon and has her last feed, burped and out into her sleephead in the living room with us with no lights on just the Tv. She wriggles a bit and makes cute noises and then after about 20 mins falls asleep. Means she’s asleep by 10-10:30pm most nights and is then transferred in her sleepyhead to her cot in the bedroom. She then sleeps through think 7am, wakes up for a feed and change then goes back to sleep for another hour or so - normally on me which I love at that time in the morning in bed 💕

Our LO has her grizzly few hours from 7-9pm then she is changed, zipped int...

Posted
24/04/2018

Our LO has her grizzly few hours from 7-9pm then she is changed, zipped into her ergococoon and has her last feed, burped and out into her sleephead in the living room with us with no lights on just the Tv. She wriggles a bit and makes cute noises and then after about 20 mins falls asleep. Means she’s asleep by 10-10:30pm most nights and is then transferred in her sleepyhead to her cot in the bedroom. She then sleeps through think 7am, wakes up for a feed and change then goes back to sleep for another hour or so - normally on me which I love at that time in the morning in bed 💕

Do you keep her awake through the grizzly hours? I worry I’m trying to put her to bed to early. She used to be fairly good a t going down managing 3/4 hrs at a time but seems to be getting worse! Starting to think she may need formula top ups

My daughter used to be a nightmare to get in to her bed, as you describe, she'd wake up as soon as I put her down and we'd have to start again, we'd start at 10 when we went to bed and it could be 1/2 before she went down but she'd sleep well after that... by 12 weeks she was going down earlier and doing 12 hours! She was ebf also

I'd just keep her asleep with you until you're ready to go to bed yourself and worry about getting her to go earlier in a month or 2, it's still really early days

If I keep her in the living room she tends to get really fussy won’t feed won’t settle and will cry and I end up having to pace round with her as soon as I go in to the bedroom though she calms down and feeds about 80% of the time some nights I can’t win!

Managed two half hour stints of sleeping in her cot so far and she is still up and feeding. Even if I could get her down for a couple of hours it would make such a difference. It’s now at the point we’re everytime I put her down I can’t sleep waiting for her to wake up

If I tried to put my son to bed at 6/7ish I’d spend hours trying to get him to settle too. Instead I wait until he’s ready for bed. I noticed that as a newborn he seemed to do a big sleep around around 9 ish (he’d sleep til midnight) so 9ish became his bedtime.
He’s 10 weeks and I dress him for bed around 8. I’ll feed him to sleep and that’s him til 2 or 3. And then he’ll feed and sleep again until 6. I get up then (my eldest wakes at 6:30) and he naps til 8.

I’d maybe stop your routine and just watch him and see when he tends to be ready for a big sleep and treat that as his bed time rather than fighting with him all evening?

Do you keep her awake through the grizzly hours? I worry I’m trying to put ...

Posted
24/04/2018

Do you keep her awake through the grizzly hours? I worry I’m trying to put her to bed to early. She used to be fairly good a t going down managing 3/4 hrs at a time but seems to be getting worse! Starting to think she may need formula top ups

She might nap in that time for 5-10 mins as my OH (other half) walks around rocking her but we aren’t consciously trying to keep her awake

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